NY/NYC and the ‘ndrangheta

[calabrianwatch]

Hi everyone, trying to wrap my head around the possible presence of ‘ndrangheta families in NYC - and then in NY more generally.

I have a question

Does anyone know of any “bad” dealings, interesting instrumental friendships or relatives of note for Rocco Commisso, the billionaire?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rocco_B._Commisso

His origin and his money would make him a perfect “target” and he surely has relatives all over NY and Ontario. Not saying he is involved in anything, just trying to gauge whether he could be target or someone interested in getting a foot in.

[Wiseguy]

There have been a few cases.

The first was in 2008 and was part of a larger international bust of 175 people targeting the Gulf and Zetas cartels in Mexico and the Aquino and Coluccio clans of the Ndrangheta in Italy. The LCN connection there were New York-based brokers Vincent and Giullio Schirripa, Christopher Castellano (later shot dead in Queens in 2010), and others who purchased cocaine there to be sold at higher prices in Italy. These guys reportedly sought protection from the Genovese family, and to a lesser extent the Lucchese and Gambino families.

The second was in 2014 and involved 24 people charged in the U.S. and Italy. Among those charged in New York were Gambino associate Franco Lupoi and Bonanno associate Charles Centaro. Lupoi's father in law was Antonio Simonetta, a member of the Ursino clan of the Ndrangheta. They were using legitimate shipping companies to move cocaine and heroin from the U.S. to Italy.

The third was in 2015 and involved 13 arrests in Italy as well the arrest of 4 people in New York, including Gregorio Gigliotti. Gigliotti (who owned a pizzeria in Queens) was reported to be affiliated with the Alvaro clan of the Ndrangheta and also had business dealings with Giulio Schirippa. The LCN connection there came from two confidential informants in the case. The first CI told law enforcement he believed Gigliotti had received funding to purchase cocaine from Genovese captain Anthony Federici because he had observed Gigliotti and others bringing large sums of cash to and from a social club owned by Federici next to the Cucino Amado Mio restaurant in Queens. A second CI said Giglittoi told him his source of funding had been Anthony Romanello, who of course was in Federici's crew and eventually took over as captain. Like the other cases, this involved brokering cocaine destined to Europe.

[calabrianwatch]

Thanks! Yes I know (some details) of these cases, some others I am learning now....I know everyone in Italy thinks the commisso are a big deal there so just trying to figure that out (from Canada)...

[JeremyTheJew]

Thanks! Yes I know (some details) of these cases, some others I am learning now....I know everyone in Italy thinks the commisso are a big deal there so just trying to figure that out (from Canada)...

Are you in Italy??

There was a CAMORRA related bust sometime in 2000s in Springfield, ILLINOIS I believe as well

[calabrianwatch]

Yes I am in Italy!!!

[calabrianwatch]

I didn't know about camorra and Illinois, must check it out!

[PolackTony]

Thanks! Yes I know (some details) of these cases, some others I am learning now....I know everyone in Italy thinks the commisso are a big deal there so just trying to figure that out (from Canada)...

Are you in Italy??

There was a CAMORRA related bust sometime in 2000s in Springfield, ILLINOIS I believe as well

Do you have a source for this? There were very likely Italian OC operatives in Chicago in the 2000s (apparently mainly from Puglia), but I haven't seen anything from downstate in that period.

[Dave65827]

Whatever happened to that Christopher Castellano murder I remember seeing that Genovese members where heard on wiretap saying he had been killed for cooperating but the murder investigation seemed to go no where

[Tonyd621]

Whatever happened to that Christopher Castellano murder I remember seeing that Genovese members where heard on wiretap saying he had been killed for cooperating but the murder investigation seemed to go no where

There is more to the chris castellano hit too. I think I remember reading an indictment back in 2008 called "project reckoning" his name was named with Gulf Cartel leaders and italian organized crime overseas. Let me see see if I can find it

[antimafia]

What appears below is more or less a copy-paste of an old post of mine on another organized-crime forum (now defunct), a forum that a number of posters here were once members of.
-------

I have meant to contribute a new post in this thread for a while, but seeing as I planned to spend considerable time typing excerpts from James Dubro's 1985 book, Mob rule: inside the Canadian Mafia, I had deferred the task. In the "'Ndrangheta Quickly Spreading In The United States" thread (original URL, which is a dead link), I had promised (poster's name) I would post here some information about the earlier history of the Siderno Group in the US and Canada by typing the aforementioned excerpts. If any American posters want to shoot straight to the Siderno Group references to places in New York, I suggest you read the first excerpt below and then search for "Flushing-Corona."

The excerpts are separated by a single underscore. The underscores that appear in the typed excerpts represent redacted information and appear so in the original. I have tried as much as possible to preserve fonts (italics, roman) and other formatting found in the pages from which I have typed excerpts. I have not made any corrections to spelling and other typographical errors. Any editorial comments in square brackets belong to Dubro, not me, unless otherwise specified -- my comments will begin with "antimafia's note." Any ellipsis points (....) are those found in the original, so they do not represent an intentional omission on my part.
_______________

From pp. 112, 113:

Michele (Mike) Racco, who ran a bakery shop on the corner of St. Clair and Nairn in Toronto, was for years the pre-eminent leader of the Siderno group, although there have always been many closely allied sub-groups and factions. Because of his extensive ties with key members of the Calabrian "Honoured Society" in Italy (with whom he consulted frequently by long-distance telephone), with prominent members of the Calabrian Mafia in Long Island, Albany, New York City, and Connecticut (whom he frequently visited both in Toronto and in the United States), and with senior Calabrese mafiosi in Montreal, such as Vic Cotroni and Paolo Violi, Mike Racco was the most powerful and the most respected of the Siderno group leaders until his death of a heart attack in 1980. One senior Toronto police intelligence officer maintains that Mike Racco had been the head of a ruling commission of three of the Siderno Mafia groups in Canada. The other main leaders of the Siderno mob were among the pallbearers at Mike Racco's funeral. [antimafia's note: Some of these pallbearers would be Vincenzo "Jimmy" Deleo, Cosimo Stalteri, and Rocco Remo Commisso. Even in the 1980s, law enforcement and some organized-crime writers knew that Rocco Remo's brother Cosimo was the head of their crime cell.)
_______________

From pp. 114—17:

A top-secret United States government report based on U.S. and Ontario police-intelligence investigations of the Siderno Mafia in the mid-1970s shows how the group was formed and how it operates in North America. Metro Toronto police in the late 1960s had completed a special project on the Sidernese Mafia, code-named "Project E". The Ontario Police Commission then did its own lengthy classified study of the Siderno group in 1972, drawing on some of the findings of Project E. The information in the U.S. document about the Francesco Caccamo papers and the Toronto Mafia comes from earlier reports by Toronto and Ontario police. (Caccamo appealed his eventual conviction on an arms charge all the way to the Supreme Court of Canada, but the courts upheld the conviction and, in doing so, implicitly recognized the validity of the documents known as the "Caccamo Papers". The authorities later tried, unsuccessfully, to deport Caccamo from Canada.) The excerpt below is the first material to be published from this internal U.S. police document.

1) While effecting the arrest of one Francesco Caccamo for counterfeiting and illegal possession of a revolver, the Ontario Canadian Police uncovered an archaic 27 page document written in the Italian language. This document has been described as an authentic ritual for a secret Italian criminal organization.

2) The Ontario police have been gathering information on a seemingly new organized crime group which has emerged as a segment of the Honoured Society of Calabria, Italy. After finding the document in Caccamo's home, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police found it necessary to collaborate with Dr. Alberto Sabatino, Chief Commissioner of the Criminal Intelligence Branch, Central National Criminalpol of Rome, Italy, for translating this centuries old composition. This document is filled with references to blood, punishment and violent death. The elaborate wording is of such flowery language it makes little sense to one not versed in idioms of the Italian language. One section describes initiation rites during which a new member takes a "bloody dagger in my hand and a serpent in my mouth" -- symbolic vows indicative of his punishment should he fail or betray the society.

3) Dr. Sabatino, who has conducted an extensive investigation in this area, has uncovered evidence that concludes that, within the Districts of Reggio, Calabria and Catanzaro and their towns and villages, with the exception of Cozenza, branches of the Honored Society do exist and flourish. This is referred to by Dr. Sabatino as the "Mafia" Calabrese. Although most of the secret Italian criminal organizations were originally designated to be Honored Society, over the years it became popular to refer to the Sicilian segment as "Mafia", the Neopolitan segment as "Camorra" and the Calabrese segment continued to be called "L'Onerata Società" or the "Honored Society".

The following is excerpted from the hitherto top-secret Ontario Police Commission study. [antimafia's note: The classified report, or study, was written in 1972 by Cal Beacock and others in the Ontario Police Commission.]

For some time now we have been gathering material here in Ontario relative to what has now emerged as a cell or locale of the Honoured Society of Calabria. The material has been collated and analysed and is now being forwarded to you for information and record purposes. The information is for the most part self-explanatory, but I feel that I should comment briefly on the significance of the Toronto Judge's decision on the trial of Francesco Caccamo.

It was in Caccamo's home that the ritual was found and during the same search some counterfeit currency and an unregistered revolver were also located. Relying heavily on the evidence of an Italian-speaking member of the RCMP and Dr. Alberto Sabatino, Chief Commissioner of the Criminal Intelligence Branch, Central Criminalpol of Rome, Italy, the Judge found:

1) That the Ritual was, in fact, an authentic Ritual for a secret Italian criminal organization.

2) That by virtue of his possession of this Ritual, Francesco Caccamo was a member of the organization.

3) Following this reasoning, the unregistered firearm in Caccamo's home was deemed to be a firearm kept for a purpose dangerous to the public peace.

In our view, these findings by the Court are extremely significant. The decision has been appealed but hopefully it will be upheld [it was] and in that case will certainly prove to be of value in our fight against organized crime.

The Siderno Group was so named by us as it first apeared that the major figures were all from Siderno in Reggio, Calabria. We are now discovering that there are members of the Siderno Group from the towns of Gioiosa, Fiumara, Locri, Sinopoli, Grotteria, San Giovino, and San Roberto, all in Calabria. In that location the locales are independent of each other; but, occasionally, when circumstances warrant, are mutually beneficial to each other and unite to form a type of loose confederation, each going its own way when a deal has been completed.

We are reasonably certain that we have locales in Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and, perhaps, Hamilton. From the information obtained so far it appears possible that there are locales of the Honoured Society in the Flushing-Corona areas of New York State where large numbers of Calabrese immigrants have settled. Most of them have immigrated to North America since the end of the Second World War. While they do business with Canadian born Italians, up to this point those who are Canadian born do not appear to hold any positions of importance within the group.

We have reliable information from L.C.N. ["La Cosa Nostra" -- the FBI official designation of the Mafia in North America] sources to the effect that the L.C.N. is well aware of the existence and identity of these people and are permitting them to operate and develop within certain limits, and there are frequent contacts by these people and known L.C.N. members. Should the decision be made to unite or amalgamate, and we feel this is probably inevitable, quite a dangerous confederation would result. The sophistication of the L.C.N. and the direct and violent Mafia Calabrese could present a serious challenge to law enforcement.

During the course of our probe into the structure and the activities of the Siderno Group there have been numerous occasions when contacts have been made with persons in, and from, the U.S.A. Enumerated hereunder are the various U.S. contacts and what scant information we have obtained regarding each contact:

Agostino, Domenic, Queens, New York: Nephew of Michele Racco, one of the leaders of the Siderno Group. Telephone No. is either ___________ or ___________. This number was found in the possession of Vincenzo Galluzzo, at whose residence a ritual initiation was to take place on 20 March, 1971. Galluzzo is believed to be a member of the Siderno Group of the Honoured Society. Agostino was in Toronto at Racco's on 26 April, 1971....

A call was made by Domenic Racco, son of Michele Racco, at ___________, listed to L and F Pizza, 9120 Corona Avenue, Corona, New York, to Domenic Agostino....

Archino, Frank "Ciccio", Jr., ___________ , Colony, New York: Subject called Domenic Racco from ___________ and was identified as Frank Archino, Jr. Another call he identified himself as Compare Franco. We have information that there was a Francesco Archina employed in 1969 by Commisso Brothers and Racco Bakery in Toronto. Subsequent directories failed to reflect anyone by this name residing in Toronto. Enquiries by U.S. Immigration indicated that one Frank Archina, a U.S. citizen, ___________, Albany, New York, made an application for his brother Vincenzo and his family in 1969....

And so the detailed report continues in the same manner for fifty pages -- listing hundreds of names, dates, telephone numbers and calls, and connections between U.S. and Canadian Mafia Calabrese. American immigration-intelligence documents further connect the Canadian and U.S. members of this group through Racco and others in Toronto. It is reported in these papers that Carlo Archina (also known as Archino), a relative of Frank Archino, Jr., is "the overall Siderno Group head in Italy"; that his brother Frank Archina was charged with murder in Denver, Colorado, in 1954, but was found not guilty by reason of insanity; and that another brother, Gino Archina, lived in Albany, New York, where he became the "leader of the Albany 'locale', Siderno Group."

In 1978, Connections co-producer Bill Macadam and I conducted several interviews with a member of the Siderno Mafia group controlled by the Raccos and Commissos, initmately connected with the U.S. Mafia Calabrese. His information substantially corroborated the police intelligence information, the secret Ontario Police Commission study, and the U.S. government report. Code-named "Joe," this informer gave us an inside look at this tough and aggressive new mob group.

[antimafia]

See also viewtopic.php?f=35&t=4581.

[calabrianwatch]

In Italian Operation Siderno Group 1993 which was also run with the DEA there is a section on Siderno in NYC, which follows beautifully from what you just posted above (thanks!). the fact that these Sidernese did not use (or were not labelled as) the 'ndrangheta name I think did affect the way info were collected.